Chapter One: Five minutes too late.
Voldemort sat up slowly and stiffly. For the first time in seven years he was able to feel, to breath, and he savored these actions for but a few moments. And then his eyes flickered towards the stairway above his head as one of the disgusting muggles who lived here came thundering down and triggered another coating of dust to fall down upon his form.
That, he thought softly, is inexcusable. "Wake up! Wake up, you worthless lump!" the loud and to a degree; grating voice of Dudley Dursley echoed off the walls and through the metal grille that was allowing several slivers of light to enter the cupboard.
Reaching a hand out, he allowed the magic that had been awakening within his new body over the last several days to flow outward to the steel lock keeping the door firmly shut. A mild red aura of energy faintly appeared around the outstretched limb and from there reached forward to melt into the door where the lock was held.
The sound of fizzling reached his ears within seconds, but the tone of Dudley died away as the already expanding child took in the sight of red light leaking out of the quickly withering lock. It took longer than Voldemort would have preferred, but in the end the lock crumbled to rust; taking with it the latch and allowing the door to swing open on its own.
No longer held trapped, Voldemort pushed up to his feet even as he was forced to hunch over due to the low ceiling. Stepping out into the lit hallway he turned towards the soon-to-be first victim of his revival, standing up straight. The boy had frozen as still as a statuette, an expression of stunned disbelief on his overly large face.
His eyes grew wider however at the unnatural, disturbing look his cousin had assumed. The blood-less tone of skin, the formerly bright emerald eyes now practically black with how dark they had become. The scar in the shape of a lightning bolt marring his forehead was scarlet from cracking open and bleeding over night, leaving crimson streaks down his face like demonic war paint.
But above even that was the look of cold, unbridled loathing that emanated from his cousins very being. The look of absolute disregard for any other humans well being, a look that could have killed and that promised death in the time yet to come.
Even the seven year old Dudley Dursley could sense the danger he was in by simply standing before whatever his cousin had become. Gone was his delusion that the other child had simply come down with the flu over the last week. The stench of his bowels releasing suddenly arose, and Voldemorts face twisted into a look of sick anger.
He thrust his wand arm forward and pushed more of his magic through his hand, channeling it. The mild aura was more focused this time, and the red burst that stretched ahead was easily the size of a baseball. It collided with Dudleys still prone form and hefted him off his feet with an "Uumph!" of pain escaping his lips.
A pair of cracks occurred moments after that sound. The first crack came as Dudleys spine made contact with the doorknob behind him, breaking his back immediately. The second was the reaction this caused, sending his head and shoulders soaring back to crash into the door itself. His skull, like his spine, was broken and blood began rushing out even as the momentum of the spell faded and Dudleys body collapsed to the floor, never to move again.
With the stench persisting, Voldemort turned from the child's body and approached the set of stairs leading up. This body can hardly stand. he thought. Those responsible for this state of weakness will suffer far longer than their spawn; this I promise myself.
Hundreds of miles away, in the most celebrated school of witchcraft and wizardry known as Hogwarts, a very old Wizard paused and turned his full attention away from the stack of parchment before him and instead to a set of instruments lining the walls around his desk.
One was emitting vile red smoke into the air in the form of a symbol very much familiar to him; the Dark Mark. A wizard baring ill intentions had entered the property. Another device, shaped as a small replica of Privet Drive, had collapsed in on itself. The wards had fallen, explaining the former.
Rising to his feet, Albus Dumbledore drew from within his rich purple robes a long wand. This wand radiated power, and for good reason. It was a wand of legend; the Deathstick; the Wand of Power; and its true name, the Elderwand.
It was only one piece of a trifecta of ancient artifacts, but Dumbledore had yet to obtain the other two, despite his years of research and searching.
Dumbledore approached the instrument emitting the red smoke, tapping the Elderwand to it and murmuring beneath his breath. The smoke being emitted remained as it was. That, in and of itself, troubled him deeply. It meant that only one dark wizard or witch had brought down the wards of Privet Drive.
A task that should have been nigh-impossible until Harrys seventeenth birthday.
Waving his wand again in a slow complicated pattern, he chanted another series of latin words and waited; No change whatsoever. Dumbledore swore softly to himself before spinning on his heel and approaching the fireplace across the room.
Once there he reached up to the periwinkle blue pot sitting above the mantel and drew a pinch of fine powder in between the fingers of his non-wand hand before throwing it in and calling out the address he intended to visit. And even as the red-orange flames burst into deep green Dumbledore was already stepping into them.
It couldn't have been more than five minutes since Dumbledore was alerted to the problem, and already he was too late. When he stepped out of Mrs. Figg's floo, her house was burned to the ground. A grotesque figure awaited his arrival; a severely charred skeleton, the face partially intact with a look of abject horror on it, hanging like a scarecrow facing him.
The house directly beside her own was likewise razed to ash, though the skeletons of those living there had been made into a more startling statement; the bones rearranged to mimic the Dark Mark, laying on the ground rather than floating in the sky.
Dumbledore let out a low gasp at first sight of the destruction, but it was soon replaced by a resigned sigh as a single tear flickered and rolled down the aging wizards face.
He could do nothing for the Dursleys, Mrs. Figg, or more importantly; Harry Potter. Turning from the remnants, Dumbledore apparated directly into the Ministry of Magic with a low crack, unable to comprehend how this level of destruction had slipped by them.
He did not notice the figure waiting in the shadows of a tree across the street, the black-green eyes alight with a silent fury of being so close and unable to harm one of his greatest adversaries. Nevertheless, for the moment, it seemed this plan had succeeded. The defeat in Dumbledores eyes had been plain to Voldemort even from across the street.